It was the first multicellular myxozoan identified and its vermiform shape initially gave strong support to the theory that the enigmatic group belongs among the Bilateria.

[3] These 50 phylogenetic markers reveal that Buddenbrockia is closely related to jellyfish and sea anemones, typical members of the animalian phylum Cnidaria.

[4] Because of the highly divergent nuclear protein sequences of Buddenbrockia, relative to those of the other animals compared in this study, only the use of a sophisticated tree-building approach (i.e., Bayesian inference) allowed for recovery of its cnidarian evolutionary affinities.

One of the researchers talked about the problems encountered studying its morphology: “It has no mouth, no gut, no brain and no nerve cord.

It doesn’t have a left or right side or a top or bottom – we can’t even tell which end is the front!” As the myxozoans are now demonstrably non-bilaterian in origin, he concluded that “the worm-like body shape evolved at least twice from two completely different kinds of animal.”[3]